Dell Financial Services helps Framestore to establish a line of credit in North America

Framestore, the British visual effects company responsible for recent box office hits Gravity, Iron Man 3 and the title sequence for recent James Bond feature Skyfall, is working with Dell to expand its business presence in North America. Framestore has deployed high performance, end-to-end Dell solutions in support of current, big-budget projects such as RoboCop and Edge of Tomorrow.

Following a longstanding partnership in the UK, Dell was selected by Framestore to provide infrastructure equipment for its new Montreal office, which needed to be completed from scratch in less than 12 months due to significant upcoming projects. When faced with the challenge of a rapid overseas deployment, Framestore’s previous working experience with Dell made it the natural choice for the company. The new studio facility, financed by Dell Financial Services, means that Framestore can now accommodate new film opportunities while also gaining access to a new and talented North American creative community of artists and engineers.

To support the establishment of its Montreal office, including 150 new artists, producers, software developers and engineers, Framestore deployed the following solutions:

Management of extensive day-to-day digital work such as image modelling, rigging, animation, lighting and compositing will be delivered by Dell T3610 and T5610 workstations.

Photoreal rendering and advanced physics simulations will be brought to life by PowerEdge M610 and M620 Blade servers

Highly-available remote access for Framestore’s London team will be made possible by Dell PowerEdge T610/T620 and R320 servers

Time saving access to the extensive catalogue of content will be delivered by Dell Networking M6620 switches while Dell Networking wireless solutions will provide fast and secure access to files

Steve MacPherson, Framestore’s chief technical officer, was particularly pleased with the performance of Dell’s Precision workstations, stating: “Dell has a made firm commitment to the professional engineering desktop and we can see that in the build quality of the machines we are purchasing. The Dell Precision T5610 is a world-class workstation that addresses the key requirements of demanding Tier One visual effects (VFX) artists. As we move forward into increasingly advanced levels of simulation and photorealism having this power on the desktop presents a wealth of creative opportunities for our artists. These machines are both powerful and cost-effective.”

By working with Dell, Framestore was able to set up its new site quickly and easily. The Montreal office has been able to grow quickly enough to hold a third of Framestore’s UK VFX capacity in terms of equipment with this number expected to increase to a half in the near future. The success of the Dell and Framestore partnership in the expansion to Montreal has created a blueprint for the company’s global infrastructure from a support and procurement perspective.

Quotes“Just over 12 months ago, we began planning our expansion into Montreal and quickly realised the challenge of building the site infrastructure after it had opened for business. Part of the success of this project is due to the help we received from Dell in terms of supply chain logistics, financing and technical support. Our entire machine room was commissioned with Dell’s participation – racks, cooling, storage and rendering – all this combined to make the planning process straightforward while the execution and delivery were both efficient and cost-effective.” – Steve MacPherson, Framestore’s chief technical officer

“The film industry is incredibly fast moving and competitive, so it’s essential that our customers are able to expand and deploy new solutions quickly and efficiently. For Framestore, it was essential to deliver a powerful solution to handle the tight timescales its high-profile projects demanded. With our ability to offer market-leading solutions and financial support, we were able to ease the process of business expansion, which can be daunting, when a business needs to grow to maximise new opportunities.” – Aisling Keegan, general manager and executive director for preferred accounts, Dell UK

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